Copyright
©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Cardiol. Dec 26, 2015; 7(12): 938-947
Published online Dec 26, 2015. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v7.i12.938
Published online Dec 26, 2015. doi: 10.4330/wjc.v7.i12.938
Adherence to cardiovascular medications in the South Asian population: A systematic review of current evidence and future directions
Julia M Akeroyd, Winston J Chan, Salim S Virani, the Health Policy, Quality and Informatics Program, Michael E DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Health Services Research and Development Center for Innovations, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Ayeesha K Kamal, Section of Neurology, Department of Medicine, Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi 74800, Pakistan
Latha Palaniappan, General Medicine Disciplines, Stanford School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94304, United States
Salim S Virani, Health Services Research and Development, Michael E DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Salim S Virani, Section of Cardiovascular Research, Department of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Salim S Virani, Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Author contributions: Akeroyd JM, Chan WJ, Kamal AK, Palaniappan L and Virani SS conceptualized and designed the review together; Akeroyd JM and Chan WJ conducted the review and drafted the initial manuscript; all authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript as submitted.
Supported by American Heart Association Beginning Grant-in-Aid, No. 14BGIA20460366; the American Diabetes Association Clinical Science and Epidemiology award (1-14-CE-44); the Baylor College of Medicine Center for Globalization Award; and the Houston VA HSR&D Center for Innovations grant, No. HFP 90-020.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available other than articles cited in this review.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Salim S Virani, MD, PhD, Health Services Research and Development, Michael E DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 2002 Holcombe Blvd., Houston, TX 77030, United States. virani@bcm.edu
Telephone: +1-713-4404410 Fax: +1-713-7487359
Received: May 29, 2015
Peer-review started: June 2, 2015
First decision: July 3, 2015
Revised: July 24, 2015
Accepted: September 29, 2015
Article in press: September 30, 2015
Published online: December 26, 2015
Processing time: 209 Days and 13.7 Hours
Peer-review started: June 2, 2015
First decision: July 3, 2015
Revised: July 24, 2015
Accepted: September 29, 2015
Article in press: September 30, 2015
Published online: December 26, 2015
Processing time: 209 Days and 13.7 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: The overall adherence rate in South Asia is quite low. Only 7 of 17 publications conducted interventions geared toward improving adherence. Even fewer (n = 3) utilized community health care workers, which provide a unique resource in these resource constrained environments. Just over half of the studies found in our review utilized validated or gold standard methods (n = 9) with the rest using non-validated self-reported measures. Additionally, there was a lack of usage of technology despite the majority of these countries benefitting from a high cell phone density.